1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fluid bed dryer comprising a bed plate, and a bed plate for such fluid bed dryer.
2. Description of Prior Art
Such fluid beds are used for drying and/or agglomerating particulate and powdered products, and they may be used as separate units, for example in connection with apparatus for spray drying milk products. The fluid bed unit may then be used for further drying and/or agglomerating a moist powdered or particulate material produced in a spray dryer. The bed plate of the fluid bed, which usually has a rectangular or another elongated shape, may be vibrated so as to contributed to the fluidization of the product being processed.
A fluid bed may also be combined with a spray dryer so as to form an integrated unit. A liquid product to be dried may then be sprayed into a flow of hot drying gas which is directed from the upper end of a cylindrical drying chamber towards a fluidized layer of already spray dried particles arranged at the bottom end of the drying chamber, cfr. U.S. Pat. No. 4,490,403. In a combined spray drying apparatus and fluid bed of this type the bed plate has a circular or annular shape and is normally stationarily mounted.
The gas distributing openings or perforations in the bed plate of the fluidized bed may be shaped so as to define fluidizing flows of drying gas having a flow component which is directed along the upper surface of the bed plate towards a product outlet of the fluid bed, whereby deposits of product between the openings may be avoided. The flow component directed towards the product outlet also gives rise to a self-clearing or self-emptying effect. Bed plates having such gill type gas distributing openings are well known, vide for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,821,342 and 4,033,555.
Plug flow of the powdered or particulate product along the bed plate may be desirable. However, gas distributing openings of the gill type may cause the lower part of the fluidized product layer to be moved in the longitudinal direction of the elongated bed plate towards the product outlet at such a speed that the upper part of the fluidized layer tends to move in the opposite direction thereby creating an undesired backmixing of the fluidized product. When the bed plate has a circular or annular shape and is mounted at the bottom end of a combined spray dryer and fluidized bed as mentioned above, the gas distributing openings of the gill type are normally arranged so as to provide a circumferentially or tangentially directed flow component. This flow component causes a rotational movement of the fluidized product layer about the central axis of the bed plate, and it has been found that product particles or agglomerates, which have been formed by the spray drying process and which are present in the fluidized product layer, tend to disintegrate, when the rotational movement caused by the gill type openings in the bed plate becomes too pronounced. It is believed that the disintegration of the particles is caused by frictional forces acting between the particles, because the rotational speed of the particles in the fluidized layer decreases with increasing distance from the bed plate.
In order to reduce the above disadvantages of a bed plate with gas distributing openings of the gill type it has been proposed to provide the bed plate with mutually parallel corrugations extending transversely to the direction of movement of the product layer along the plate as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,210. Another solution which has been described in Danish Pat. No. 149,737 involves the use of a bed plate having transversely extending sections with oppositely directed gas distributing openings of the gill type, or transverse sections with circular, punched openings and openings of the gill type, respectively. These latter bed plate structures do to some extent reduce the product backmixing tendency in a fluid bed.